Screenhead

You ever have one of those weird cultural experience where you’re looking at something REALLY REALLY SUPER IMPORTANT to some other culture but you don’t understand one bit of it?  So you’re trying to be polite while they dance around and set each other on fire or drink each other’s urine or something and you’re convinced that they’re all just completely bonkers?

That’s exactly what Seventh Moon is like.

Lions Gate sent me out a copy of this, the third of four installments in the latest go-round of the Ghost House Underground series, and it’s a doozy, I’ll tell you that much.  See, Seventh Moon is all about the seventh lunar month in the Chinese calendar.  And in that month, they have this big whopping festival in which they burn paper and sacrifice whatnot so that the spirits of the dead–let loose from hell in a very Halloween-style fashion–can hunt up the living and find some new recruits.

Now, this is actually a pretty scary idea, and it’s done fairly well, but there were so many stretches where I had no idea what was going on.  It was creepy, yes, but mostly it was creepy because I didn’t understand it.  And considering it was written by the director of The Blair Witch Project and produced by Haxan Films, also of The Blair Witch Project, it wasn’t that surprising that half of the movie was sort of lost in sheer gobbledygook.

Oh, and when they actually busted out “this map is useless” in the opening minutes, I about bust a gut.  Shrieking laughter through my tears, I asked if they were planning to kick it in the river next.

Sadly, though, the Blair Witch cinematography is back in full force also, with plenty of bouncy camera action to vaguely revolt you.

That was the biggest problem here–it was a good idea, just not done very well, but a lot better than I expected from Haxan.

So the Screenhead Ten Scale responds to the shock by handing the spooky boogeymen of Seventh Moon a six out of ten.  it wasn’t particularly bad, but there was plenty wrong with it, too.

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